New Beginnings
by Before Ever-After
Summary: Desperately, he had left, only to fall asleep and wake up knowing nothing. Now, he is back, a new person, with a new life, but thrown into his old placement.


The house behind him was dark, save for the one light in the kitchen that stayed on constantly. This was the place that he was escaping, for, like a jail it was slowly killing him and turning him into someone he was not. He wanted to escape before it was too late. He wanted to leave behind the facade of a perfect life, but he didn't know how. He didn't know what it was that made his life 'perfect', but he knew that he hated it. He hated the parties, the small talk, the slaps on the back that made the bruises his father had left twinge with pain. He hated himself for going along with it.

Suddenly his legs fell from beneath him and he dropped to the ground, his loud, heartbreaking sobs filling the air, turning it's normally cool and loving caress as cold as his heart was becoming. Madly he pulled at the sleeves of his jumper, ripping the thick wool as easily as if it were paper. He glared at the silvery scars that lay on his wrists, blaming them for all his troubles. They weren't the problem though; once upon a time he had thought they were the solution.

Anger surged through his body and he found himself standing up again, wiping the tears from his eyes and attempting to pull down the sleeves of his jumper. "Coward," his conscience was yelling at him as he began walking, "If you were really brave you would have faced your father." The voice scared him. It only ever piped up when he was upset and when it did speak it sounded all too much like his father when he was angry.

He walked through the night and into the early hours of the morning; his feet hurt, his stomach rumbled with hunger and his eyelids drooped with tiredness, yet he forced himself to keep going, for he knew that the further away he got from his father, the safer he would be.

Eventually he came to a small pool of water and he fell to his knees to drink, not caring if the water lay stagnant or not. When he had drunk so much that his belly sloshed whenever he moved, he looked intensely into the pool, searching for an answer. The face that stared back at him was deformed; one side swollen, with a blue black hand print on his left cheek. Dry blood matted his hair, tinging it red and one of his piercing blue eyes was covered by red and puffy skin, the slightest tinge of a bruise already visible.

Sickened he dipped his head into the water, scratching at his scalp blindly, trying to remove all of the blood. He could feel it dislodging from his hair, and whenever he opened his eyes he could see small strands of red floating past, twisting and turning like ribbons. Finally, when he would hold his breath no longer, he lifted his head out the water, gasping and spluttering.

When he caught his breath, he leaned over and gazed into the slightly pinker water, pleased that his appearance was infinitely better. His eye and cheek were still swollen, but he had expected that. He knew from experience that the swelling would diminish in a few days, although the inevitable bruises would linger. His face was clean though, and even with his injuries he was still attractive. His hair was as dark as it had ever been because it was wet and it hung in loose curls, finishing just above his shoulders. His one open eye was a startling blue, his surprisingly dark tan only enhancing its colour.

"Vain," the word echoed through his mind, his father's voice back again. He pushed himself off the ground and began running, fighting to get away from his father's voice. He kicked up dirt around him, some of it settling on his legs, turning the fine hairs a light brown. He hated that his father had this effect on him, but he hated his father's meaty hands on his face, or the pain of his father's studded belt ripping through the skin on his back even more. That was why he kept running. He ran to save himself.

He kept running through the early morning darkness, night lapsing into day, darkness into light. His body was exhausted, he was once again parched and his stomach was screaming for its next meal, but fear kept him running. He didn't know how far he had run, but he knew it wasn't yet far enough. He needed to be as far away as he could possibly be before his father realised he was missing. He kept running.

The sun was high in the sky before he came to a small derelict town, which he declared safe. Well, at least safe enough that he could stay for one night without running. He pulled his father's moleskin pouch out of his back pocket and opened it, quickly rifling through the coins that lay there, most of them gold. There was way too much money for him to count, but he knew that there would definitely be enough for him to survive for a while, and after that, when he got desperate, he could always take a job. But that was way too risky right now.

He pulled the drawstrings of the pouch shut and shoved it back into his back pocket before hurrying down the street, searching for a place at which he could stay. He didn't hear the footsteps behind him until it was too late; he didn't register the force with which he had been hit with until he was on the ground unconscious and he didn't move when he was rolled forcefully to one side and the money that he had gone to such lengths to steal was taken from him. He didn't move at all until much later in the day when a retired muggle paramedic found him, and when he finally did move, it wasn't of his own free will. He wasn't awake to see the crowd that had surrounded him and he wasn't awake to see his attacker slip away, wearing the same grin that he himself often wore.

In fact, he didn't awake for the longest time, and when he did, it was to a fuzziness that consumed his entire being. It wasn't that he was hard of sight; it was just that the things that made whoever he was_ him_ were gone. The only thing about his past that he could remember was that he was running; but he didn't know what from.

**Oh! A cliffy! I only decided today that I was going to make this longer, until then it was a one shot. But what does the general population think? One shot or longer?**


End file.
